Gary Nabhan of Taco Diplomacy spoke candidly with us about the impact of the 2010 Convening on his work.

“What surprised me is how sophisticated the integration of art and science & public participation are in a lot of the projects here.

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Folklorist Maribel Alvarez and ethnobotanist Gary Paul Nabhan of Taco Diplomacy are giving a lot of thought to the future of a traditional local food, the beef taco. It’s part of their “Flavors Without Borders/Sabores Sin Fronteras” project, which looks at the shared culinary traditions of the Southwest, including Northern Mexico, Southern Arizona and New Mexico.

Click here to read the full article and view the video: Feeding the Future: Smart Ranching and the Southwest Center | The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona.

–Taco Diplomacy, a project of Sabores Sin Fronteras, is a 2009 Invoking the Pause Grant Partner.

Within the last decade, tremendous changes have occurred in America’s food production, distribution and consumption. Just take a second to look back to what you ate and what you could not afford to eat at the turn of the millennium, in January of 2000.
Nowhere is this change more evident than in the food- producing landscapes in the Southwestern borderland states of Arizona and New Mexico, where both positive and detrimental changes have occurred. These changes not only affect human health, but the health of land as well.
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Although Arizona sits in the most arid region in the U.S., it produces a surprisingly low amount of food, from ancient crops like beans and corn, to winter vegetables that show up on dinner tables around the country. A new report shows some cracks in the southwest’s food systems.

Former NAU and current U of A researcher Gary Nabhan edited the study, called the “State of Southwestern Food Sheds.” He told KNAU’s Daniel Kraker that Arizona’s food security has never been more vulnerable and explains the impact this has on our children and future generations.
 
Find out why 25% of America’s ranch and farmland loss in the past 25 years has occurred in the four states bordering Mexico.
 
Click here to listen to the radio interview.